In short, if you want to be called "Sir", stay in England. Or slay a fucking dragon. That would impress even me.
The Royal Family is so desperate to bolster it's relevance that it's taken to knighting aged rock stars. McCartney was a gimmie. He was, after all, a Beatle and that's far more impressive to me than being a knight. But McCartney was never much of a threat to the establishment. That was John Lennon's job....and look where it got him.
The naming of Sir Reginald Dwight (who you know as Elton John) was a ballsier move. It wasn't terribly long ago that Elton was a maniacal cokehead. And, oh yeah, he likes cock. I mean he really, really likes cock.
Mick Jagger is a whole other ballgame though. The Rolling Stones, in their day, were a threat to the establishment though. A big serious threat. That's why for the better part of twenty years they had longer arrest records than musical ones. In 1977, the Rolling Stones very nearly toppled the Canadian government...by accident. Long story short, Keith Richards was arrested in Toronto with 24 grams of heroin whilst Ronnie Wood was fucking the prime minister's wife. Hilarity ensued.
As recently as four years ago, Jagger demonstrated, shall we say, less than chivalrous conduct. Mick, who had been married for about eight years to the mother of four of his children (and girlfriend of a quarter-century,) Jerry Hall, knocked up a Brazilian model. Mick likes strange pussy, as rock stars do, and Brazilian chicks are highly, highly fuckable. Writing about "wanting to eat my wedding cake off of the ass" of a Brazilian cleaner is part of what cost me my last job. I understand these things.
However, when Mrs. Jagger decided that she had had enough and initiated divorce proceedings, Jagger said that his Hindu wedding, conducted in Indonesia, was invalid and he therefore would not owe his wife anything in the way of a divorce settlement. And Jagger was not a 23-year-old, drug addled road hog at the time. He was 55 years old.
For the monarchy to so lower its centuries-old standard in a mad dash to relevance is not suprising. For the man who once sang "I shout and scream/I'll kill the King and rail at all his servants" to
become a said servant (or as they put it "defender of the realm") is an unforgivable sell-out.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot to point out that Jagger doesn't even live in England! He's a tax exile and has been since 1971. As such, he can only stay a certain number of days each year in Great Britian. Am I the only one who finds it odd that the monarchy would honor someone who refuses to pay taxes to it with a fancy, if ultimately meaningless, title?
Keith Richards said it best about Jagger's investiture when he said "Why does he need to be a knight? He's Mick Jagger! He should've held out for a Lordship."
Of course, Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street know far, far better than to approach Keith Richards with a ridiculous title like "Sir." He already has far more impressive titles, anyway.
These include, but are not limited to, "The Human Riff," and "The World's Most Elegantly Wasted Human Being." Unlike Jagger, Keef refuses to forgive and forgey all those years when the Crown and its crooked cops attempted to make them long-term guests of Her Majesty's penal service.
Besides, Keef has already received a much more important title. From the Pope. And he has the newspaper to prove it, see?
The whole thing is so fucking silly that I can't believe that I'm even addressing it. Rock n' roll was never supposed to be about social respectability. But Jagger, while one of the greatest rock stars ever, was always about social climbing. For almost forty years now, he's been far more impressed with Studio 54, supermodels and old queens like Truman Capote. His becoming a goddamn knight doesn't suprise me half as much as the monarchy offering it to him in the first place.
I thought I was at a point in my life where nothing would surprise me anymore. But life has an adorable way of proving me wrong.
